Xanpan: Team Centric Agile software development by Allan Kelly

Author:Allan Kelly [Kelly, Allan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Software Strategy Ltd.
Published: 2015-07-28T22:00:00+00:00

7.5 Specialists

One less than perfect feature of this board is the special Java area. Small sections, just big enough to comfortably hold one card, have been sectioned off on both the Prioritised and In Progress columns. Although there were five developers in the team, four of them worked in C.

The C developers originally came from the purchased company, understood the system in detail and formed quite a close-knit group. While some of these developers had more knowledge of some parts of the system than others they could all, in general, pick up any cards that involved C work. This greatly simplified scheduling, as the next developer to become available would pick up the next ‘C’ card.

The fifth developer only worked in Java and had joined the team after the acquisition; indeed he was quite new to the company. The Java developer had no desire to learn or work in C, and the C developers felt little compulsion to work in Java, although they had been told that they would need to eventually. Fortunately the bulk of the code was in C - the Java code largely related to the interface with the rest of the company.

This situation was clearly less than perfect - and counter to the ideas set out here about teams. However this was the situation as found, and was not going to change simply because it was inconvenient, so some coping mechanism was needed.

The solution was to identify which cards - of whatever colour - required work in Java by writing ‘J’ì°½ on the card: by definition everything else was in C. The team leader and product manager always ensured there was one ‘J’ card waiting in the Prioritised column, and the developer would work on one card at a time.

Well, that was the original plan. A surprising number of J cards quickly became blocked. They moved from ‘in progress’ to ‘blocked’ and the developer pulled another card. When we inquired into what was happening, it turned out that the Java developer blocked because he didn’t understand other aspects of the company system. He would send e-mails to people asking questions, and while he was waiting, move the cards to ‘blocked’. Nobody else on the team was in a position to help him, and being relatively new to the company he knew little of the wider system or who was the right person to ask was.

Once the issue was identified, the team leader and product manager could help the Java developer find the answers to his questions. In some cases it was simply a matter of giving him the confidence to ask questions orally in person or on the telephone.

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